The present invention relates to an intracorporeal probe, for example preferably for examining hollow organs or natural or artificially created body cavities in the human or animal body, the probe being designed in the form of a capsule that can be introduced into the body without external connecting elements, comprising a housing and an image pickup unit inside the housing that is designed for optically recording, for example imaging, a region (termed pickup region below) outside the probe.
An intracorporeal probe of the aforesaid type is known in general, for example from DE 101 46 197. EP-A-0 667 115 also discloses an intracorporeal probe that is designed in the form of a capsule that can be swallowed by the patient to be examined in order to be able to examine the gastrointestinal tract visually. The optical signals received from the probe are transmitted telemetrically via a transmitter present in the capsule to extracorporeal space and visualized there. This known autonomous video probe certainly enables visual inspection of the gastrointestinal tract, and permits the images to be transmitted to the outside telemetrically, but undertaking a diagnosis with the aid of the transmitted images is exceptionally difficult. The reason for this resides in the fact that, although the position of the probe inside the patient can be determined in the meantime relatively well, the regions picked up by the image sensor installed in the probe are of a rather random nature. It is not possible for specific regions inside the gastrointestinal tract to be specifically picked up. The image information obtained by the probe is consequently more of a random product and cannot be determined by the examining doctor.
Against this background, the invention is therefore based on the object of developing the intracorporeal probe mentioned at the beginning so as to enable a controlled, flexible and targeted visualization.